A mind in transit…

Days Fifteen to Eighteen

“The security guy brought you to the room at around 10am. You had a huge, cheesy grin on your face and you were carrying that half empty bottle [Bacardi 151] in one hand… I tried to wake you, I even shook you hard a few times, but you wouldn’t get up.”

I woke up four hours after this and missed the World Cup final as a result. Sigh hard.

Vegas is a special place, and I sure as hell have never seen anything like it before. This place has no limits. Anything goes. And when you marry that with a person like me who has very little self control, well, fun [albeit very expensive fun] will be had.

Back to that night. We started drinking at 11am that morning. This was after the 6am finish of the previous night. I can’t even remember that first night too well, but we did an unbelievable amount of bar/club hopping and drinking.

An honourable mention, and highlight from the night goes out to Jerome, 82. This guy was at one of the clubs we were in, and absolutely tearing up the dancefloor with his uh, unique style of dirty old man dancing. Some fools were trying to show off with fancy break dancing, but Jerome was having all the fun with the ladies; I tip my proverbial hat to you, sir.

This is a good time to mention that most of what happens in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas if you’re tweeting and foursquaring, but there will be blocks of time that will be omitted from this blog and remain in the recesses of my mind, because, well, some things are better left unsaid.

Oh, and when I say “we”, I’ll most likely be referring to my cousin, Aamod, who joined me for most of this weekend.

Ahem, again, back to that night. So we started drinking at 11am, while having breakfast at Hooters! They have a whole casino here! I don’t get why families come there though.

It was 40° that day, so after checking out the kittehs at the lion enclosure, we headed to the gigantor pool area, which as you’d expect, was ridiculously packed.

Lounged around poolside with a drink, taking in the fantastic scenery, and I really did feel like life does not get any better than this!

Ah, before hitting up the pool, we stopped by the concierge desk, enquiring about what shows were playing, and there was a David Copperfield matinee show at 4:30 with seats available!

Copperfield was amazing. “How did he do that?!” is probably an apt summary of the show. Making groups of audience members disappear and reappear, cars popping up out of nowhere, all with a healthy dose of humour, and a surprisingly emotional story about his grandfather.

Of course I was still drinking at this point, and one thing that’s funny in retrospect was a chat we were having with a couple staying at the Luxor. They were telling us how that morning, they got in the lift and found a guy unable to press the button in the lift because he was so drunk, and eventually the casino staff had to help him to his room. They jokingly said, “hey, who knows, that could be you guys tomorrow!” I kid you not! Little did I know how dead on they would be.

The drinks were crazy expensive at the clubs the night before, so we went for a walk along The Strip in the search of some alcohol.

This was our first encounter with the Girls Direct guys. There are literally hundreds of them spread out across The Strip, and they’re all exactly the same! They’re wearing brightly coloured ‘Girls Direct’ tshirts, all of South American [I’m not being racist!] descent, probably in their 30s or 40s, and they all have these cards that they hand out, but not before they repeatedly do this weird thing where they clap the cards against their hands in the exact same manner, before forcing themselves you. They don’t talk either.

I saw one of them at first, then five more in short succession and had a chuckle. By the time I’d walked another 200 metres and seen about 15 more of them, I couldn’t believe it! I did not action any of those cards.

We got two 750ml pre-mixed bottles of rum [Zombie [a 151 thing] and Long Island Iced Tea], and on the way back, had to buy one of the giant, guitar shaped novelty glasses containing very alcoholic concoctions.

Sorry for yet another interruption, but one of the greatest things about Vegas is their Open Container policy. i.e. you can walk the streets with alcohol in your hand and without a care in the world, and let me tell you, the vast majority of people were doing just that. This is probably why I felt [and was] consistently drunk the entire weekend.

We were all “pre-gamed” up, and looking through the bunch of passes we’d got from some random earlier in the day, we decided Tao, where Pamela Anderson was having her birthday.

The line was long. Too long. We waited ages, and were probably halfway to the entrance, when my sneakers were pointed out as our ticket to not get in. Sigh.

A bad start to the night, but we felt slightly better after some girls in the cab line told us it was just way too overcrowded and they were heading elsewhere after not being there very long.

One thing that was really trippy about The Venetian was the shopping district that’s inside the casino, but gives the illusion of being outdoors, and the middle of the day.

In general, these casinos are like mini cities and I swear you could spend a whole weekend without ever leaving the confines of one, and not miss the outside world one bit.

Went back to the MGM to get my dress shoes [just in case], finished the majority of the remaining alcohol, and headed to Rain.

After waiting in a line to get tickets to wait in another line to get in [so convoluted], we entered this crazy place.

Rain is set over multiple levels, mostly playing high energy dance music, dancers all over the place, and flames that come out from the ceiling every now and then.

I don’t know how long we spent here, but it felt like a long, long time, and god knows how much more alcohol I consumed. Apparently Paul Oakenfield was playing.

I’m not sure what happened for the next little while, with my memory being, sitting at the Wheel of Fortune table, screaming at Roger [the dealer guy] for some generous rolls. There was also a Kiwi guy there.

It got to about 7am and we decided to call it a night, and headed back to our room. Just outside our room was where I met my brief, but good friends, Hipster Guy [HG] and Cute Hipster Girl [CHG]. Obviously I don’t remember their names.

They were just sitting outside the room opposite us with another dude, and somehow we struck up a conversation. We said our farewells after a while and went back into the room, but before I sat down, I saw some of the Zombie still remaining, and said something to my cousin like, “you know what, I’ve still got some energy left, I’m gonna hang out with those guys”, took the Zombie and walked out the door.

The Zombie finished way too quickly, so I suggested we go to the liquor store, as you do.

Now this is where things start to get very fuzzy. I remember being in a cab with HG and CHG [I really didn’t need to create those acronyms, but I might as well use them now] and I remember walking around a giant convenience store.

That’s it. My next memory is waking up, checking the time, and not believing that I missed the World Cup final -_-

I was feeling surprisingly ok, and very hungry, so we went to Fatburger! I’d noticed it the previous day, and it was great hangover food.

Aamod had to leave shortly thereafter, what with work the next day and all, so we said our goodbyes and I went back to the room, wondering what to do the rest of the night.

Oh yeh, I decided to stay another night in Vegas. I was going to originally go to LA Sunday night, but I was loving this place too much, and felt like a day in LA wouldn’t be worth it.

I spent the night being a good tourist, taking in the sights and sounds of the various, exquisitely themed casinos, and satisfied my cheesy fries craving.

I’m sitting in the airport [I love McCarran!] now, watching a bogan bounce around an AFL ball, with my destination, Reality, and a longish wait at LAX before a 14 hour flight, becoming depressingly clear.

You have been too good to me, Sin City.

Maybe I’ll do a summary post once I get back, but otherwise, thanks for reading and commenting on these increasingly long-winded, and blubbering, according to some, posts!

UPDATE:

I was reading this post and realised how much I hadn’t recounted, but one thing I have to mention is my visit to The Gun Store.

@reetssydney had said in passing by, “see if you can shoot a gun somewhere!”, and I was reading the Wikitravel article for Vegas and saw that you could shoot a real machine gun, amongst other things at this place called The Gun Store.

After choosing your weapon and rounds [I chose the M249], with encouragement from scantily clad women, of course, you can choose a target you want to shoot at. People were blocking the targets, so I just said “number 11”, which turned out to be a fat Asian guy -_- I could have instead been shooting at Bin Laden, a clown or a zombie.

I had expected some level of training or demonstration, but you just get your eye and ear protection, go into the shooting gallery [I jumped at the sound of the shotgun next to me ~_~], and then the instructor just positioned the gun, and said, “short, sharp bursts before going into kill mode”.

I started firing and something kept hitting my right arm, and I realised that the shell casings were ricocheting onto it, mentioned it to the guy who was like “oh, shit, you’re left handed” *sigh* Surprisingly though, the recoil wasn’t bad at all, and once the adrenaline kicked in, the deafening sound didn’t affect me as much. Kill mode [just go nuts until the rounds run out] was a lot of fun, and I didn’t really spray the rounds everywhere either; they were pretty accurate.

Definitely a lot of fun, but after looking at my arm and elbow later, I found they were littered with semi-circular cuts from the shell casings and bleeding -_- I blame the fail “instructor”